Episode Details

This week, The Gravity Well welcomes members of the Alberta Council for Environmental Education (ACEE). Hosted by Alex, a self-taught jack of all trades, the podcast features guests like Nicole, an environmental education coordinator, and me, a former geophysicist turned environmental advocate. The conversation highlights the importance of environmental education, the role of social work in addressing climate disasters, and the need for a hopeful, solution-focused narrative to combat eco-anxiety among youth. The guests share their personal journeys and professional insights, emphasizing the power of community action, indigenous knowledge, and the need for systemic change to create a sustainable future. The episode concludes with a call to action for individuals to find their unique contributions to environmental stewardship and to foster meaningful connections with nature.

Welcome & Alberta Council for Environmental Education (ACEE) Introduction

Alex:

Welcome to The Gravity Well where you, and we, break down heavy ideas into small buckets, you, and we, can handle your mission. Our mission is simple. Help us work through our dilemmas and your dilemmas through conversation and processes. Together you, we, and your community will face dilemmas and make the world a better place for all. In the spirit of truth, I acknowledge I’m a settler on stolen Blackfoot Treaty Seven Territory and Metis District Five and Six lands. I take Reconciliaction by seeking the wisdom of elders and individuals who aim to restore water, air, land, life, or community, a healthy living relationship with the earth and each other as our guide.

Jenny:

Great. And you’re going to do an introduction of yourself?

Alex:

My name is Alex. I’m a jack of all trades, master of none, autodidact by nature, self-taught. I have an arts background, a background of 21 years in private security, special events, and crowd control as well as construction. I like to be the dumb guy and learn from the experts out there and ask questions when I find them to be poignant. With that, I open it to Nicole.

Nicole:

Hello, my name is Nicole. I am an environmental education and engagement coordinator with the Alberta Council for Environmental Education. I have a background in environmental sciences as well as in formal education, and I’ve had the opportunity to really pull those two fields together in what I’m doing today.

Jenny:

Excellent. I’ll hop in next. I’m just going to give a hat tip to Kip. Kip, thank you for bringing us all together today, and when you get to your introduction, you can expand on what I mean by that. We’re here with a group that is all committed to ACEE — the Alberta Council for Environmental Education. I met all of these wonderful people helping Kip pull this great wealth of knowledge and people committed to environmental work forward. It’s been a really great experience for me. The thing that I really appreciated about it, Kip, is that simple questions really provoke these big thoughts. I’m going to go back to what brought me in and why I want to speak about green jobs.

I have always had a strong sense of justice as a toddler. I think my parents would say, I was talking about fairness a lot. “That’s not fair” was a big thing for me as a toddler. I’ve always been rooted in that social justice. I always felt the need to stand up for the little guy, if you will. And I also was really tied in with the environment, reflecting on it. I went to summer camp. I loved going camping and ended up becoming a camp counsellor. I was part of student council, I was in public school sports and I was in public theatre. So I did a lot of things that were community-based and environment-based, and that sort of just carried through my life. My husband’s also an environmental scientist, so I’ve had that in my corner as well, but I became a geophysicist.

I did that just out of luck. Meanin